Ted Nordhaus at the New Atlantis:
McKibben’s solar revolution has unfurled with startling rapidity. The last two years, he argues, have marked an epochal technoeconomic shift. And yet, despite a lot of solar deployment during that period, one would be hard-pressed to find much evidence of a shift in any of the key greenhouse-gas emissions metrics. The vast majority of global energy continues to be produced by fossil fuels, a fact that hasn’t much changed for decades. The Chinese “electro-state” that McKibben says represents the future doesn’t look appreciably different in this regard than the U.S. “petrostate” that he says is now trying to hold that future back. Both still depend on fossil fuels for about 80 percent of their energy consumption.
Across Here Comes the Sun’s narrative arc, what is apparent is that despite McKibben’s best efforts at optimism, the epochal shift over the last two years that actually animates the book is the return of Donald Trump. Here Comes the Sun is a rearguard action, not a victory march — an effort to sustain the climate politics that McKibben has played such a crucial role in constructing over the last generation at an existential moment for his movement.
more here.
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